DS fic: "Seeing"
“Blunt-force trauma to the head, possible sexual assault. Probably a mugging gone bad.”
It was a young white male, early twenties, with a fatal head wound. His pants were bunched down around his ankles haphazardly. Fraser took a glance at Ray, who was chewing his gum with unnecessary force, a sign that he was both pensive and frustrated. “This sucks, Frase. Random act of violence, city of 2 million people. I’m telling you, this is gonna be a cold case.”
The word cold seemed to remind his body of the realities of this winter morning. He moved his toes in his boots and looked over at Ray, who seemed to be withdrawing his small frame within his long coat, shivering. He blinked and looked back at the murder victim. If they had been standing in northern Canada, their assumptions would be markedly different.
“Ray, I’m not sure this death is a murder.”
Ray seemed to be conflicted between irritation and intrigue. Intrigue seemed to win. “Watcha thinkin’ Frase?”
“I think he fell and hit his head.”
“Okay, so how do you explain the clothes being off? He wouldn’t have removed them himself, would he?”
“He may have, actually. A paradoxical effect of hypothermia; he may have become disoriented and started removing his clothing, expediting his heat loss. It’s actually common in hypothermia sufferers, due either to a malfunction of the brain’s hypothalamus, which usually regulates body temperature, or a malfunction of the muscles that contract peripheral blood vessels, which become exhausted and relax, allowing blood to surge to the extremities and fool one into feeling overheated.” Fraser stopped, wondering if he was rambling. But Ray seemed energized, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
**
Fraser’s theory was confirmed as fact later with a more thorough examination. Alcohol intoxication had led to disorientation and eventually hypothermia. Ray was stirring sugar into coffee and shaking his head. “Open and shut, can’t believe it. You were right, Frase. Not that that’s the surprising part, since you’re a verita-, versimila-, total fountain of useless information that turned out to not be useless in this situation, cause it saved us a whole lot of time and department resources and shit. Sometimes it is nice to be partnered with supercop.”
Fraser missed Ray’s wink and wry grin. He was distracted by his own thoughts, which were unusually scattered, wrapped up as they were with his own emotions, which were themselves difficult to sort through and decipher for some reason. “It’s only because my background is different, Ray. I’ve been trained in mountain survival techniques. It wouldn’t be as necessary to train urban police officers to recognize the symptoms of hypothermia.” He finally focused on Ray and blinked. “I know that I wouldn’t have fared well searching for my father’s killers if it hadn’t been for Ray Vecchio’s talents as a Chicago detective, nor would I be able to work in an urban environment for the past few years if it hadn’t been for the presence of both of you, respectively.”
Ray just took a sip of his coffee and nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. I’m assuming telling a twenty-two-year-old kid’s parents that he’s not coming home sucks just as bad up there as it does here though.”
Fraser smiled ruefully. “Yes Ray.”
Ray sighed and slung on his coat, then hesitated. “You don’t have to come with me on this one, y’know, if you’re not feeling up to it.”
“I’ll come with you Ray.”
Ray shot him a grateful look before leading the way.
**
In his dream Fraser is once again among his grandmother’s book collection. He’s reading about falcons, mostly about the peregrine and its wandering nature. His eyes wander to a paragraph about tetrachromacy, the quality that most birds possess of having four independent channels to convey color information. Tetrachromatics, the paragraph reveals, are able to distinguish between colors that appear identical to the human eye.
In the dream Fraser blinks and looks up, a large window having appeared before him suddenly. Outside he can see the streets of Chicago, lit up not by streetlights, but by the northern lights in the clear sky overhead.
**
Fraser’s running Dief, as he does every morning. The dream is now far from his mind, nearly evaporated with his first waking moments, as dreams often are. This morning the air seems brisk and fresh, and Carl Sandburg’s words are running through his head for whatever reason: And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen/ the gunman kill and go free to kill again./And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women/ and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. Fraser slows to a walk, and breathes deeply and slowly. He used to read that poem constantly, in his early days here, but it’s not until now that it occurs to him that these particular lines could just as easily occur in a poem about the Yukon. Maybe anywhere, he thinks as he breathes deeply and looks around him.
**
“You’re not really that naïve, Fraser.” Ray had his hands in his pockets, giving Fraser a knowing smile.
“What do you mean, Ray?”
“When you were talking to those streetwalkers, you acted all naïve, like you don’t know that what they do is illegal and we could arrest them. You do that around snitches too. You act all…innocent and Canadian all the time, making people think you don’t know what you do know, that you’re not street smart or anything.”
Fraser flexed his fingers. “Do you find it deceptive, Ray?”
Ray shrugged. “I guess you’re not deceiving anybody more than they let themselves be deceived, y’know?”
“Yes, Ray.” Fraser took a look at him. Ray looked cold and tired, a condition no doubt exacerbated, if not caused, by too much coffee, too much junk food, too little sleep and too much worry. Fraser had spent a fair amount of time warning Ray about the ill effects of such habits.
Fraser glanced across the street, then looked back at Ray. “I’ll be right back, Ray.”
He carefully stirred the necessary amount of sugar into the coffee before placing a lid on the cup and crossing the street to return to Ray.
“Thanks, Frase.” Ray’s eyes widened in pleasant surprise.
“You’re welcome Ray.”
**
The poem, for whatever reason, lingers in his mind throughout the day. Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,/Bareheaded,/Shoveling,/Wrecking,/Planning,/Building, breaking, rebuilding,/Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,/Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs…
Poetry isn’t usually something he analyzes deeply, unlike other things. Fraser has always preferred to let himself enjoy it for its own sake. But he can’t help but ponder the meanings more deeply. Why is a savage pitted against the wilderness? The wilderness has always welcomed the savage nature, channeled it in its most natural forms of survival. It’s here, he thinks, in the cities, in the heart of civilization, where instincts are cooled that true savagery awakens, coming not from a need to survive, but from the darkest desires and emotions of the human mind.
**
Too early to sleep and too windy to run, Fraser finds himself sitting in the church that evening. His eyes rest not on any of the religious symbols, but only on the colors of the stained glass. Fraser has a deep respect for faith, but cannot recall a time in his life when he has had any faith of his own. He thinks about Ray Vecchio and fights the urge to worry and to wonder, but to no avail. If he were home he would find a way to assuage his feelings in the openness, but here, surrounded by the architecture, it just seems to return to him, no matter how far he tries to chase it away.
Later he ends up at Ray’s apartment, who invites him in and brews some tea for him. They sit in companionable silence. Fraser thinks about people and the terrible burdens of destinies.